Are coding skills mandatory for a web designer?

Today, web designing has outgrown as one of the most talked-about professional fields. It’s not hard to find students and graduates taking up web designing as their career arena. Although web designing purely deals with designing the layout of websites, some of the novice and even the experienced web designers often get confused as to whether they should know how to code.

Well, this is a question that’s been bothering many web designers residing in different corners of the world. Here, in this blog, I’ll try and find out whether coding skills are necessary for a web designer or can he/she survive the stiff competition by merely possessing the technical knowledge of PSDs.

Interactive websites are the need of the hour

Nowadays, apart from having a perfect visual appearance, websites also need to contain a tint of interactivity. And, this is possible only if the person designing the website is well familiar with the coding that needs to be done in order to ensure the interactive status of the website. Since HTML and CSS are visual languages, it is quite easy to gather a good amount of expertise in using them for the benefit of your website. By keeping the coding part in mind, it becomes quite convenient for the web designers to design a website that contains user-interaction.

Becoming a one-stop-shop for customers is a HAPPY feeling!!

Restricting your skills to PSD wouldn’t allow you to broaden your range of customers. If you choose to explore the world of coding along with your usual web designing skills, you can turn out to be a one-stop-shop for your customers. They’ll look up to you for all their development and designing needs and you’ll be able to grow your customer base by huge bounds and leaps. Being a web designer cum developer, I’ve myself witnessed developers who take a lot of time in learning web designing than the vice-versa. Hence, if you too are a web designer, knowing little basics of coding will definitely give you an edge over your colleagues.

Should you start by picking a programming language?

Well, the decision of choosing a programming language is purely up to you. If you’re into the web solutions domain, you may opt for learning PHP and HTML5 languages. Never stick to a single set of programming languages, rather experiment with the ones that are related to the current web technologies that are being preferred across the globe. If possible, try and be friends with a web developer who’ll guide you on the latest programming languages that are befitting for your work environment.

How should you ignite the process of learning coding basics?

Well, there are plenty of useful resources that can aid you in learning everything related to web development. You can choose to access different websites that teach you the basics of coding. Here’s a list of websites that helped me during my pursuit of learning coding:

Codeacademy– Codeacademy is a great website dedicated to all those web designers who want to learn the basics of coding. You can have an easy access to interactive lessons that teach you languages such as HTML, CSS, PHP, jQuery, Python or Ruby and JavaScript. All the coding lessons are segregated into theory and practice sessions, making the entire learning activity a fun for the newbies.

W3schools– W3schools comes with a set of tutorials and references that can be explored by web designers who want to learn the basics of coding. You can learn about popular technologies including CSS, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, jQuery and PHP. Additionally, the site also offers an in-depth information on databases, servers and other stuff related to website coding.

Dash– Dash is yet another interactive website that allows you to learn everything about the programming languages including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The best part of Dash is that it allows you to learn the basics of coding via real-life scenarios, making the entire learning process a fun activity altogether.

My Final Verdict

Now that you’re well familiar with all the advantages of learning coding, I’m sure you’d have got encouraged about the entire concept. Well, as a web designer, learning to code is definitely one of the most logical decisions you’d make in your career. By getting that additional technical knowledge about website development, you can easily showcase your passion for creativity. Internet is flooded with websites that are looking for web designers who have that extra knowledge of coding, done using a latest programming language. So, make yourself eligible for such a job opportunity and see your career graph grow by an impressive level. This one decision of yours will mark your success as a trained web solutions provider.

If you liked the above post, do consider sharing it. Also, don’t forget to drop in your comments within the comments box below.